Family Participation

• Groundwork laid for reducing waste going to landfill
• Buying necessities in 100% recycled varieties
• Forced to decrease water use--toilet dams
• I encourage whoever happens to be doing the shopping to use cloth bags
• Put food in oven during preheat, leave oven door open after food is cooked
• Use grill, especially during summer to reduce heat inside
• Leave skylights open in winter, closed in summer
• Keep air pressure in car tires high--improve gas mileage
• Using reusable containers

Greening Eating Extra 10/10

Driving: Limiting Your Environmental Damage Extra 9/10

Greening Printing Extra 8/10

Greening Your Shopping Extra 7/10

Turning Faucet Off Extra 6/10

Toilet Dam Extra 5/10

For those of us who still own standard flush toilets that use about 1.6 gallons of water each time they're flushed; Colin recommends placing plastic cups of water in the toilet tank. This decreases the amount of water needed to flush by the capacity of the container. All three of the toilets in my house have at least one toilet dam, and one has space for two. I believe wholeheartedly in using materials for their entire useful life and retrofitting those implements so they're environmentally friendly. When one of our toilets breaks, instead of repairing it, we'll install a water saving split flush toilet.
My toilet dams: